For twelve years, one thought ran through my head more than any other.

I am not my mother.

My mother. People respect and admire her. I can’t go anywhere in this town without hearing about how great she is. And she is great. She’s a master at her job, at her church work, at being an example to others. Few women inspire me the way she tends to. Granted, it’s not always to be better than I am. Sometimes it’s just to be different than who she is.

I haven’t said it in four years. Not because I finally decided to believe it, but because I finally gave in.

To a point.

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Everyone says I look just like her. (Well, everyone except for a whole two people in my life. Both those women think I look more and more like Daddy everyday. I do have his shape. Not build, shape. There’s a difference. Personally, I don’t think I look unlike him, butnot just like him.) Looking like Mother isn’t an altogether bad thing. I think she’s beautiful. It does mean that I get her family’s short stature, and that double-chin thing that I can’tseem to shake. We have a very similar smile and have confused people on the phone. We’d even have the same color hair, if we didn’t color it (she goes blonde, I go dark auburn.)

I went into education, just like she did. Even taught elementary school, just like her. I loved being in the classroom and watching students “get it.” Paperwork and parents never bothered me. I love the challenge of getting the material across so that every student masters it. Third-graders were the breaking point. They were a wonderful class, but I’m just not cut out for that age. At the first opportunity, I hopped on a high school position and ran with it. You know what my favorite part of this job is? Watching the strides the students make in a year’s time.

In high school and college, Mother and I clashed constantly, which I think may be a prerequisite for a healthy mother-daughter relationship. Man, life was hell in that house for awhile. I take full responsibility for my part. The main issue, I think, was that we’ve something of the same temperament and clashed. Looking back, I’m not sure how we shared that house through some of those things. Seems like one of us (me, I guess) would’ve bolted at some point.

I hear that I’m just like her pretty often, too. Sometimes, I just have to laugh at that. Personality-wise, I think I’m a whole lot more like Daddy—same quirky sense of humor and all. Mother and I may do things similarly, but it’s just because I learned those things from her. I make a lot of it up as I go, though.

Even going off to school and then moving out on my own later, I strived to be different from her. My life at nearly 29 years old is very different from hers. I’m single (she’d been married 11 years), have no kids (she had two, and one was getting ready to go to junior high, eek!), have lived on my own for several years, and have a masters degree (she was starting to go back to school to become a teacher). Those are “big” things in life and those aren’t the things I’ve chosen to do because of my desire to not become her. No, it’s the little things that I do.

The first thing I did that I felt like carried my signature on it and separated me from her a bit was making spaghetti sauce. I don’t know why that’s such a big deal to me. She doesn’t do anything fancy with spaghetti sauce. A can of paste, can of sauce, maybe some diced tomatoes, ground beef browned with onions, spices. Easy. I, on the other hand, take whole tomatoes and dice/puree them fresh, garlic, chili powder, oregano, basil, and thyme. Salt and pepper to taste.With or without ground beef. Nothing canned or preserved. It’s not what I grew up eating, but I don’t want it any other way anymore.

There are other things, too.

I buy shoes because they make me feel pretty.

I drink a vodka tonic (with extra lime) every night before bed.

There’s always a bottle of decent chardonnay, and chocolate in my house.

I sleep in the nude 90% of the time (clothes are constricting, you know?).

I’m a writer and love wordplay.

You’ll never see me wearing sensible shoes two days in a row.

I tend to cuss when I drink. Or get pissed. Or breathe (sometimes).

My best friend is a wonderful man, who’s involved with another woman.

I’m less tolerant of stupidity than she is.

I’m way more liberal than she is.

I cherish the days that I can sleep late (even if “late” is only 8 a.m.).

I think nothing of shopping at Wal-Mart at 2 a.m. to avoid the lines.

I love good rock music (Aerosmith, Van Halen, Queen..that era).

I refuse to listen to the Christian station. They play nothing I like.

Okay, so some of that’s mundane. I told you it wasn’t big things that I do to project being different from her. But it’s not always the big things that make people anyway. It’s the little things.

Every year, Beloit College in Wisconsin releases a Mindset List to help faculty understand where the incoming freshman class is coming from. I have this feeling that, particularly for me, it’s going to get more frightening. And actually, I think it’s a little sad how many different things they missed out on, for one reason or another.

It’s time again for me to do a post on the news. And let me tell you, there’s a lot going on out there.

The Lance Armstrong Witch Hunt.

Okay, so, Lance is now being accused of having taken performance enhancing drugs. I think it’s rather fascinating that the French are suddenly pulling up test results from urine samples taken 6 years ago to support this accusation. “B” samples, even. I’d agree with the assertion that the French are just bad losers, if it weren’t for the fact that it wasn’t even the sports labs that “discovered” this issue. It was a lab that was trying to perfect tests to find the specific drug they now say Lance took. (Listen to me, “Lance”—like I know him or something!)

You know, while I don’t doubt that more athletes are guilty of taking performance enhancing drugs than we’ll ever know, I don’t think Lance did. I think that, sometimes, when you go looking for nefarious things, you find them, whether they exist or not.

Pat Robertson’s “Suggestion” to the President

Okay, this guy makes me itch as it is. Why do we let him leave his house? It saddens me that anyone actually believes anything that comes out of his mouth. I don’t want to sound judgmental, but I can’t fathom this guy has Christianity right. Christians may not sanction some things, but they certainly shouldn’t gay bash, use racial slurs (both of which he did this summer at a private party in Houston), or suggest murder. You can argue all you want that his statement was taken out of context, but precisely in what context should the phrase “take him out” be taken?

In Huntsville, TX—mother steals own babyOkay, if you read the story for this one, you’ll see it’s not as bizarre as it sounds. Mothers are, generally, allowed to take their infants from the hospital. But, mothers with severe mental and emotional issues. It doesn’t say it in this story, but the local news says she may have had drug issues.

Apparently, her other children (4 years and 1 year) were removed by CPS sometime in the last few months. The hospital there in Huntsville is bound to have been privy to this info—especially if they were planning to keep the child for a few extra days to make sure he was okay. Why in the world was she allowed to be alone with the baby? Don’t give me this crap about being short-staffed, that’s really no excuse.

You know, so what? With as many ridiculous things making it to courtrooms, I think it’s high time that people were told they’re being stupid. Someone should tell some of these idiots that they are, in fact, behaving stupidly and the rest of us are tired of supporting their frivolous asses.

Got an email this morning from one of the owner/moderators for Bibliophilist today. Seems a review I wrote this summer of Little Chapel on the River, has shown up on the author's website (her name is Wendy Bounds). Woot! Makes me happy!

I've been back at work 12 days. Yes, 12, I started before everyone else.

I'm exhausted. I can't remember the last time that I was so tired. I know I've been getting up earlier to work out, but I've also been going to bed earlier to compensate. I do really well all the way up to 8 o'clock, and then I give out.

The Wonder Dog is beside himself. He wants to play, and play, and play. I'm only good for about 30 minutes by the time I get home and in for the night. I feel bad, but I keep telling him I'll make it up to him this weekend. I feel like a mother.

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I watched the new reality show on NBC tonight--Tommy Lee goes to college. What a trip. Dude seems to have enough upstairs to actually have made it as a college student, although it would've been challenging before the drug use. Really, it's kind of interesting. Watching him on the walking lecture for his botany class, I found myself rooting for him (eventually, he got the write term and the emphasis in the right place). I may watch this one all the way through because it's just a bit interesting.

Sunday morning television makes me itch. Not all of it. Good Morning America and the news don't bother me to much. And I like CBS Sunday Morning (except for the host's poor attempts at poetry to introduce stories).

It's all the "church" shows. Well, almost all. I do really enjoy watching William Vanderbloemen at First Presbyterian Church in Houston--I even get up to watch the sermon at 6:30 on Sunday mornings. No, the ones that make me itch are the others.

Some of them seem so fake, so televangelist (which is my main argument about CBN). I don't appreciate flash in a sermon. By that, I mean, I don't think that the pastor needs to raise his voice and resort to histrionics to send the Christian message. Pacing up and down the stage and wearing purple suits just turns me off. Sermons shouldn't all be designed to make you "feel good," but the convicting ones don't have to be delivered by yelling at the congregation. And, building an entire sermon around one verse taken out of context is just poor theology.

I guess it's the religious upbringing that I've had--Presbyterian. We're quiet, not flashy, not showy. My pastor may raise his voice in a sermon to emphasis a point, but he doesn't yell at us. I've never sat in a Presbyterian service and felt like I was being called out, or that being convicted came at the cost of some dignity. The sermons are grounded in strong theology, not delivered with "surface" theology.

Of course, I also think that "churching" should take place in the presence of other believers. Sitting at home on your own is more like a devotional than what a church service should be about. I'll grant that some people have no alternative and that some people initially came to faith because they heard about it on TV. But I firmly believe that in order to grow in your faith you have to worship and learn with other Christians around you.

So, these Sunday morning "throw some churching at you" shows make me itch.

Question: If you could live forever, would you and why?Answer: "I would not live forever, because we should not live forever,because if we were supposed to live forever, then we would live forever,but we cannot live forever, which is why I would not live forever."--Miss Alabama in the 1994 Miss USA contest.

"Whenever I watch TV and see those poor starving kids all over the world,I can't help but cry. I mean I'd love to be skinny like that, but not withall those flies and death and stuff,"--Mariah Carey

"Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part ofyour life,"--Brooke Shields, during an interview to becom e spokespersonfor federal antismoking campaign.

"I've never had major knee surgery on any other part of my body,"--Winston Bennett, University of Kentucky basketball forward.

"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates inthe country,"--Mayor Marion Barry, Washington, DC.

"I'm not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president,"--Hillary Clinton commenting on the release of subpoenaed documents.

"That lowdown scoundrel deserves to be kicked to death by a jackass, andI'm just the one to do it,"--A congressional candidate in Texas.

"I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away fromthem. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and theIndians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."--John Wayne

"If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure."--Bill Clinton, Ex-President

"We are ready for an unforeseen event that may or may not occur."--Al Gore, VP

"Traditionally, most of Australia's imports come from overseas."--Keppel Enderbery

"Your food stamps will be stopped effective March 1992 because we receivednotice that you passed away. May God bless you. You may reapply if thereis a change in your circumstances."--Department of Social Services, Greenville, South Carolina

"If somebody has a bad heart, they can plug this jack in at night as theygo to bed and it will monitor their heart throughout the night. And thenext morning, when they wake up dead, there'll be a record."--Mark S. Fowler, FCC Chairman

Man in Louisiana has been masquerading for years as a decorated retired Marine general. Is found out when, after standing up and speaking at a veterans' event in uniform, local media starts checking him out. Guy was a PFC for 19 months, after Iwo Jima.

I know that adults are out there masquerading as who and what they aren't all the time. Identity theft and other nefarious things. But this one really bothers me.

It seems that the whole deal started as a mix-up that he didn't bother to correct. When he moved from Florida, he moved his American Legion membership to the post in the new town and someone there thought he was a general. Before long, he was agreeing to appear at veterans' events in the area. He even handed out coins in the time-honored military tradition of officers and senior enlisted servicemen.

What possessed him to not say "Hey, guys, you misread that paperwork. I'm not a general" at any point when he first moved? I know what kept him from saying anything later--he was a respected man, looked up to, called upon, honored. And once you taste that under the guise of a lie, you can't crawfish and correct everyone. You must save face and maintain a level of (assumed) respectability. Everyone's thought "A" was true for so long, that you can't possibly tell them that, actually "Q" is the reality and "A" was just for giggles.

It's a shame this is barely making headlines. I think the country needs character education.

This is the design that is now on the small of my back. About that big, too. It took Chano (the tattoo artist) about 2 hours to ink it, permanently, on me. I'd put a pic of the actual image up, but it's more than a little difficult to take a picture at that angle on your own and I forgot to take my camera with me. Maybe later.

I was well aware that the location I chose would be more painful than many other spots on the body. Apparently, it's because that space is just really sensitive. Really, it wasn't too terribly bad. When he was working on areas right on and right around my spine--less fat there, I guess. Then there was this one spot that made my leg jerk every time he hit it. And with all those colors and the black outline, that was a few times. Scared Chano the first time, thought I was running away (not with the thing less than half done!). After that, he learned to warn me so I could wrap my leg around the rung of the chair.

I actually had a lot of fun. The gay man that does the piercings at the shop sat and talked to me while I was sitting there. I don't know what radio station was on, but we sang all the songs together, everything from Guns 'n Roses to Staind to Van Halen (an incredibly bubble gummy David Lee Roth recording, ick).

It was great. Will I get another? No. I'm done with that, but I'm really glad I did it.

The practice of putting women on pedestals began to die out when it was discovered that they could give orders better from there. -Betty GrableI use that quote because last week I got to give orders to someone who'd gotten a bit big for his britches. Remember, dear readers, the 12-year old? (see here, and here). Seems last week he finally got a clue. Apparently, the old adage about "he who laughs last" also applies to "he who retorts last." This is good to know.

I hadn't spoken with him in a week or more when I got a text message from him on my phone in the small hours one night. Woke me up, damn it. The text said something like "I don't know why you've gotten so cold lately. I want the warm, sweet little girl I know back." (Damn. And here I thought I'd managed to move beyond being merely "cold" right on to "completely gone" as far as he was concerned. I'm obviously losing my touch.) Well, I didn't respond. Hour later--the phone goes off again. "I wish you'd just talk to me...I don't understand what's wrong with you but I'd like to help." Oh honey, you're pissing me off now. There may be something wrong with me, but I'm not the one with problems here. Again, I didn't respond. It was 3 in the morning and I had to be up in 3 hours. Screw it. I wanted to get back to the dream with the hot guy in it.

When I got up, I responded with a note saying that this wasn't working--I didn't need someone in my life like him and would prefer he leave me alone. Hours later, at lunch...I get a text from him that clearly wasn't for me. In it, I'm called a "dam liar." I couldn't resist, as childish as it was, I had to point out that adults don't bash other adults, but if they do they spell all the words correctly (damn, not dam--what am I, a person who lies about dams??).

His response? "It wasn't for you, about you, and my phone didn't have 'damn' in its dictionary. Why don't you just stay on your perch you self-righteous bitch and leave us common folk alone?" Quickly followed by "What happened to you? You used to be so warm and caring."

Kinda hurt my feelings...am I a self-righteous bitch? I'd never describe myself as one, but then who would? Bitch, yes. Self-righteous, no. I moped for a few seconds, then considered the source.

I sent back "I'm sorry, it's terribly hard to hear the commoners from so high upon this perch. Might I suggest you just disappear?" No response. Yes..he's gone. Has been for almost 2 weeks. Praise Allah.

Happiness may well be getting to sleep a little later than usual on a Saturday morning. I'll grant that 7 a.m. isn't really all that late, but since I usually get up around 5, two extra hours makes a difference.

I got up this morning, migrated to the couch and turned on the television. The usual Saturday morning junk is on--paid programming. Half an hour of why my product is "fabulous" and better than any other you might find that does the same thing. Plus all the bonuses is if order now--making your original $49.95 purchase a $90 value--for two payments of $24.95. I just think you've got to be awfully low or hard up to get yourself involved in infomercials. They're so fake and just ridiculous.

However, I was incredibly pleased to find one of my favorite movies on this morning. The original "Dr. Dolittle" with Rex Harrison in the lead. I love it all--the Pushme-Pullyou, Sophie the heartsick seal, the plow horse that needed glasses for short-sightedness, the great sea snail. It's one of those classics that I don't think should ever have been "remade." The Eddie Murphy "Dr. Dolittle" is funny, sure (what couldn't be when the guinea pig's voice is that of Chris Rock?). But, it's just not the real thing. I'd be all for an updated version, but not one that strays so far away from the story it's supposed to be based on. Yes, I know there is such a thing as artistic license, but sometimes that license is used too freely.

A few weeks ago, I got to spend a week in beautiful Lawton, Oklahoma. LOL--Lawton isn't beautiful in the least. It's a boring Army/college town. The bars aren't even all that decent. Ice cream shops are pretty good though. I'd never had a rocky road milkshake before. It's really hard to suck a marshmallow or an almond up a skinny straw.

One of Lawton's "tourist attractions," is the prairie dog colony. Now, these prairie dogs aren't native to the area. The way I understand it, they were planted here by some well-meaning people in the community years ago. Now, many of the Lawtonians across the street from the park the colony inhabits find that they are often a nuisance. They're really kinda cute, kinda fun to watch, but I can see how they'd be a problem for some. Seems they occasionally cross the street and start building tunnels and rooms in peoples front yards. Safety hazard, not to mention just annoying.

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Just once, I want the contestants on a game show to tell the world that they're married to "just an okay guy/gal who is sitting at home on his ass because he's too self-absorbed to come see me play here on TV." I'm just not buying that everyone's married to fabulous spouses who are sitting on the front row of the audience.

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I know I promised to write about beetles. Sadly, the beetle pictures I took never saved on the camera (why, I don't know). The other night, I took A.C. the Wonder Dog out for the nightly walk. As we stepped out, I found this HUGE beetle on my front step. I saw huge--I'm used to fairly small ones. This one was easily 2 inches long. We're talking the size of one of those Madagascar hissing cockroaches. Yuck.

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The dear Wonder Dog is growing up. He's definitely in his terrible twos stage, and frankly, we may be stuck here. If he doesn't cool it quickly, he will be shipped off to the Grandmommy's house and left there until Granddad decides to beat his little furry butt.

I'm thinking, based on the above statement, that I'm definitely not ready to have kids. I don't like the dog messing up my stuff (and by that I mean "destroying")--what would I do with a kid?